ABOUT

I’m originally from Oswego, IL, which is about 50 miles west of Chicago. For college, I moved to Ithaca, NY to study physics at Cornell University. There, I focused on my passion for astronomy, and eventually started my career as a scientific researcher. After graduating with my BA in 2017, I moved to Morgantown, WV to pursue a PhD in physics at West Virginia University. I defended my thesis “Bayesian Methods for Multi-Messenger Analysis of Supermassive Black Hole Binaries: Pulsars and Quasars and Gravitational Waves, Oh My! in April 2022, which includes my work on gravitational waves, supermassive black hole binaries, and multimessenger astronomy, as well as work I’ve done with the NANOGrav collaboration.

Now, I’m the CIERA-Adler Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics and the Adler Planetarium. Here in Chicago, I’ll be continuing my research on pulsars, quasars, and gravitational waves, while also working to develop a research program with Adler’s Doane Observatory. I’m also, as ever, working to help make physics a more welcoming and inclusive field. For more information about me, download my CV or email me at caitlin.witt@northwestern.edu.

Astrophysicists like to have fun too! When I’m not busy studying the universe (or frantically debugging code), you can probably find me painting, baking, reading, hiking, or riding horses.